The ghost of the iPhone: Why Michael Saylor thinks bitcoin is mirroring Apple’s legendary ‘valley of despair’

Michael Saylor wants bitcoin holders to think about Apple (AAPL).

Not Apple today, but Apple in 2013, when the stock had fallen 45% from its peak and was trading at a price-to-earnings ratio below 10, priced like a tired cash cow with no future. The iPhone was already indispensable to more than a billion people, yet the market remained unconvinced. It took seven years, along with the backing of Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, before Apple fully recovered its prior valuation.

This is the comparison favored by Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy (MSTR), by far the largest public holder of bitcoin $BTC$62,964.56.

“There really is no example of a successful technology investment where you did not have to weather the 45% drawdown and go through that valley of despair,” Saylor said on Natalie Brunell’s Coin Stories podcast.

“Ours is currently taking 137 days so far. But it might take two years, it might take three years. If it took seven years, congratulations. It’s just like Apple.”

Bitcoin $BTC$62,964.56 has dropped roughly 45% from its all time high near $125,000, mirroring the scale of Apple’s 2012 to 2013 decline. The downturn has already left scars. On Feb. 5 alone, when bitcoin fell from $70,000 to $60,000 in a single session, the network recorded $3.2 billion in entity adjusted realized losses, according to Glassnode. That surpassed the Terra Luna collapse as the largest single day loss event in bitcoin’s history.

Saylor attributed the more muted cycle in part to structural changes. The migration of derivatives activity from offshore venues to regulated U.S. markets, he said, is dampening volatility in both directions, compressing what might once have been an 80% drawdown into a 40% to 50% decline.

Traditional banks still refuse to extend meaningful credit against bitcoin holdings. That forces some investors into shadow banking or rehypothecation structures, which can create artificial selling pressure during periods of stress.

From quantum FUD to Epstein FUD

Saylor was similarly dismissive when asked about the risks posed by quantum computing, describing it as the latest in a long line of existential narratives, from block size wars to energy consumption to Chinese mining dominance, that generate attention but ultimately fail to derail the network.

He argued that quantum computing is not a near-term threat and is more than a decade away from posing a practical risk in all likelihood. By the time it becomes relevant, he expects government, financial, consumer, and defense systems to have transitioned to post quantum cryptography. Bitcoin’s software will evolve as well, he noted, with nodes, exchanges, and hardware providers upgrading through broad global consensus if necessary.

Any credible quantum breakthrough, he said, would require coordinated upgrades across every digital system worldwide, not just bitcoin. In that context, he framed both the quantum narrative and renewed attention around the Jeffrey Epstein files, which have been used by critics to target certain Bitcoin Core developers, as shifting forms of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

“It’s a non-issue,” Saylor said. “I guess they were getting tired of the quantum FUD and they moved on to the Epstein FUD.”